


Doin' What Comes Natur'lly

by fictorium



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Annie Get Your Gun, Broadway, Broadway Star Angie Martinelli, F/F, Femslash, First Kiss, Theatre, everyone's gay in the theatre darling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-14 01:33:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4545090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angie's made the understudy to the understudy of a bona fide Broadway star, in a major new musical. Peggy, ever the loyal friend and schemer, devises a plot to make Angie the star. It's the least she can do for her very best gal pal.</p><p>Thanks to delightfullyambiguous and ladyvivien for beta work!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doin' What Comes Natur'lly

“English!” 

Peggy looks up from her sad slice of pie just in time to see that it’s Angie wrapping her arms around Peggy’s neck. It takes remarkable self-control to prevent her reflexes tossing Angie aside and wrestling her to the ground, but Peggy manages it through gritted teeth. Helped, of course, by a strange sort of warm glow that spreads through her from the simple hug.

“Good audition then?” She asks, relieved to see that her tea hasn’t spilled with the arrival of Hurricane Angela.

“I got it! Well, not _it_ ,” Angie clarifies right away, disentangling her arms and sinking into the booth seat opposite Peggy. “But I’m a swing! I’m on Broadway. And I’m first cover to Merman’s standby. Can you believe it? The director said he loved my acting, but singing-wise he needed someone closer to Merman’s belt, y’know? Besides, if the standby never goes on, then I’m definitely never going on. But what does that matter? I’m in a show! A real show that means serving jerks here is officially done with. I gotta go quit!”

Peggy is impressed that Angie barely seems to draw breath during that entire torrent of information. It does speak to a rather well-trained voice, at least, though Angie never sings casually for a friend to overhear. 

“So when’s opening night?”

“You’ll come?” Angie gasps. “Oh, I thought you’d be too busy, with your work and all.” Angie says the last part out of the corner of her mouth, the very model of discretion, or at least her version of it. “I mean, I don’t know how many tickets I’ll get, but I’ll buy you one myself if you really want to support me. It’s just… I might not be in anything but the big numbers, dancing. You know, if the whole cast is on?”

“Right,” Peggy sighs. Really, a musical is one thing, but a musical that Angie is barely in? It might be beyond the call, it really might. “Explain to me again what it takes for you to go on?”

“Well, if Merman calls out sick - and that’ll be the day, right?” Angie’s smile is conspiratorial, and Peggy nods along as if she knows who this Merman person is and what her medical records look like. “The standby goes on. If Merman’s out and the standby is too, then I get to go on for either of them.”

“But it’s not like the Royal Family?” Peggy enquires. “That is to say, you don’t get one step closer each time one person drops out?”

“Not really. I just get to make up the numbers in the chorus if someone’s stepped up.”

“Right,” Peggy feels the beginning of a plan formulating. “Now what if I were to come in on a less important night? I wouldn’t want to distract you from the spotlight, Angie.”

“Oh, I’m not gonna be in the spotlight,” Angie reminds her. “But you could come in any night that week, just pick the day. Now I really should go tell Earl back there to shove his apron where the sun don’t shine. You want anything while I’m in there?”

“I’m fine,” Peggy insists, watching her friend walk away. At last, there might just be a way to repay Angie’s life-saving antics of the previous week. 

***

Peggy enters Howard’s flat with her usual caution. Despite three weeks of living here, she still isn’t certain they won’t be ambushed by some heartbroken starlet, or worse. It’s her hypervigilance that lets her pick up on the faint groaning right away. 

“Angie?”

No response.

“Angie? Angela?” Peggy darts across the ridiculous foyer and knocks on Angie’s bedroom door. The next groan comes from somewhere behind her, and Peggy whirls around to see Angie’s arm hanging off the loveseat in the telephone room.

“Couldn’t make it any further,” Angie rasps when Peggy looms over her. “Sorry, English.”

“What happened?” Peggy tries not to manhandle her dear friend, but a little is necessary to check for stab and bullet wounds. There’s no blood anywhere, but Angie is frighteningly pale and still dressed in her dance clothes. 

“Never seen anything like it. Danced our legs off.”

“Rehearsal did this to you?”

“I’ll walk it off. I’ve been too nervous to sleep and then wow. Wow, Peg. You gotta see her. Merman is everything they said and then some. Even in rehearsal, I swear to God. She’s just sitting there with the script and then they call her,” Angie manages to sit up, a genuine twinkle in her eye. “And that mouth opens and holy mother of God, now I know what it’s gotta be like when they call you up to the Pearly Gates. I never heard anything so great in all my life.”

“Do you want me to arrange for some dinner?”

“You think the fancy housekeeping budget stretches to steak? ‘Cause I could eat the whole cow.”

“I’ll see what Mr. Jarvis has provided,” Peggy promises. “Why don’t I draw you a bath?”

“English, you’re the greatest roommate an actress ever had, you know that?”

“Well, don’t tell Miss Merman. I wouldn’t want her to steal me away from you.”

***

By the second week, Angie seems much recovered and is practically skipping to rehearsals despite her general exhaustion. Peggy’s done her best to follow along, but it seems that Angie is doing three times as much rehearsing as most of the cast, given the nature of her understudying. Beyond that it’s occasional updates about Merman dominating the rehearsal room and trying to stop Angie from falling asleep into her mashed potatoes on the nights they manage to dine together.

There’s peace for a few weeks, although Peggy doesn’t worry any less, when the show takes off to New Haven and then Boston for tryouts. One evening there’s a call at the flat, Angie’s excited whisper relaying a story of how Merman had caught the skin of her hand in the prop pistol, bleeding profusely through an entire number. The woman had simply summoned the show doctor to patch her up and continued on with the show. Peggy tried not to grit her teeth at this further evidence of the indestructible Miss Merman.

Under the guise of seeing Angie on her first day back in down, Peggy takes the short walk across Midtown. It’s an excuse to scout out both the Imperial Theater, and if she uses her spycraft a little, hopefully the dressing rooms for both Merman and the standby who goes on for her. She strides along 45th St, only to discover the stage door isn’t anywhere in evidence. Assuming then that it follows a model similar to the New Theatre on St. Martin’s Lane, Peggy darts down the alley to the right of the building and is rewarded with a stage door sign on 46th. 

Rapping on the metal door, she’s greeted by a grizzled man in an open shirt and stained undershirt, cigarette dangling perilously from his lower lip. 

“Here for the Equity inspection,” Peggy announces, pulling a clipboard from her purse. If all else fails, most New Yorkers fear bureaucracy far more than guns. “Just the dressing rooms today, stage area tomorrow, and someone else will handle the auditorium.”

“Since when do Equity do inspections?” He grunts at her. “Sounds like sticking your beak in to me.”

There followed an almighty crash, and Peggy treated the stage doorkeeper to one of her most severe looks. He wilted under her gaze. 

“Sounded like it came from stage, but they already called time for today. Cast are upstairs, so maybe you want to go look at-”

Peggy took off in the direction of the arrow with stage embossed above it in gold leaf. 

Onstage, the crew are sheltering in the wings, far from the fallen debris. Bricks and dust are littering the stage, and a huge steel girder, slightly bent is atop of the pile of chaos. Behind her, Peggy hears some girls chattering, their nervous laughter betraying how recently they’d been standing in that very spot.

“I think we got our very own curse, girls,” Peggy hears a familiar voice announce. She turns to see Angie, ready to being a gossip fest with the other girls of the chorus. Peggy smiles, both at the possibilities an imagined curse presents, and of stumbling across Angie, here in her element. 

“If that girder had fallen during rehearsal,” a booming voice projects towards them from the opposite side of the stage, addressing the director and stage manager, both of whom look shell-shocked. “I don’t know how many people would have been creamed.”

“Producers!” One of the girls hisses, as a few suits come hurtling down the aisle towards the stage. 

“There’s no way we can stay here if they don’t … English?” Angie finally notices her. Peggy does her best not to wilt under the sudden collective attention of the chorus. “Girls, this is my roommate, the one I was telling you about.”

“The one you never shut up about,” someone teases, and Peggy blushes every bit as furiously as Angie does. 

“Miss Merman, we’ll need to give the owners time to repair the structural damage,” one of the producers is saying as he walks across to shake her hand. “If we can arrange two weeks in Philadelphia to cover that time…?”

With a nod, it’s decided. 

“Looks like I’m off to Philadelphia in the morning,” Angie groans. “But that gives us time to grab dinner. Let me get the details, Peg, and I’ll meet you back at stage door. You can tell me how you got past Ken. He’s a regular bulldog about guests.”

***

“So,” Peggy eases in as they sip a pre-dinner martini. “Philadelphia is really happening?”

“Yeah, I got a day in town while they set everything up,” Angie confirms. “Merman’s rallying the troops, so everyone is pretending like we weren’t glad to be back in our own beds at last.”

“Whose bed were you in out in Boston, exactly?” Peggy teases.

“You know what I mean!” Angie squeals. “You want to try boarding houses for actors some time. You wouldn’t be in the mood for bed-hopping, I’ll tell you that.”

“Single sex?”

“Naturally. Not that it stops us in the theater,” Angie confides in a whisper. “I mean, everyone expects it from the guys, but there’s more than one flexible girl dancer in the company, if you catch my drift.”

“Speaking from personal experience?” Peggy seizes on a chance for confirmation of something she’s suspected for a while. Something that, for some reason, has her almost giddy at the thought of Angie admitting it.

“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell,” Angie drawls, downing the rest of her drink and waving the waiter over. “So what have you been up to, with that apartment all to yourself?”

“Oh you know me,” Peggy deflects, deciding not to mention the incident with the gentleman downstairs. If he’s going to skulk around behind plants and other bits of furniture, he really should expect to be mistaken for a Hydra agent. “A few late nights because a book really caught my attention, but otherwise I’ve been something of a nun.”

“That’s a waste, Peggy Carter. Hey, I never did ask you if that’s actually your real name?”

“It is,” Peggy confirms with a ready smile. “Well, Margaret, but you know. You’re not terribly suspicious for someone who shacked up with a spy, are you?”

“I figured you always tell me the truth where you actually can. I think that counts, when the lies are just for national security, right?” Angie shuts up fast as the waiter veers towards them, and fresh drinks are ordered in a jiffy. “Don’t suppose there’s anything you need to spy on in Philly, is there? The girls in the company are nice, but you know how hoofers are. It’s all comparing toe injuries and arguing whose last gig was better than this one.”

“I had heard this production was quite a big deal.”

“Oh, it is. You don’t wanna know what it’s costing them to put on, but that doesn’t stop the stage kids. Who needs a Merman show that’ll run til our kids are in college, when you can be playing to three sailors and a beagle in Nantucket for three nights? That’s real theater.” Angie finishes her mockery with an eye roll that Peggy herself would be proud of. “I never knew it was such a sin to actually want to have a decent job.”

“Just like mine at the phone company?”

“Yeah,” Angie snorts. “A lot like that.”

***

The cast troops back from Philadelphia with a fresh spring in their step, or at least Angie is on top of the world when she arrives back at the flat. They’re opening on the 16th, and Angie has finally bonded with Merman’s understudy, Mary Jane, and feels like they’re all pulling together in advance of the critics being unleashed on them. This she relates around mouthfuls of biscotti, a stamina-building gift of concern from her mother, who arrived an hour before Angie did and subjected Peggy to an interrogation that even the SSR couldn’t teach. Thankfully, Peggy’s disinterest in all things theatrical meant she had little to divulge beyond a few anecdotes that Angie could have told better.

“I’ll let you spend some time with your mother,” Peggy is finally able to interject. Angie has just confided that Merman and some of the senior company members are getting a tour this evening to show how safe and restored the proscenium arch is, and that sounds like an opportunity if ever Peggy heard it.

“Sure you don’t want to stay?” Angie is faintly pleading. “Ma brought some cannelloni too, it would be a shame for you to miss it.” Angie’s mother’s glare suggests she would be just fine with Angie’s inappropriate English roommate missing this meal and plenty more besides. Angie leaving home to live in a respectable boarding house had been one thing. Sharing a Stark love nest with a mysterious foreigner is apparently not acceptable. 

“No, you fill her in on all the plans for the big night tomorrow, Angie. I’ve got to go… see a man about a dog, in fact.”

Peggy grabs her hat from the hatstand, tucks her purse under one arm and is tripping out of the front door before Angie can mount another protest. If she doesn’t act soon, she’ll be dragged to sit through what is allegedly a very long show, one with Angie barely featuring at that. That is even less acceptable than Peggy apparently is. Besides, letting any kind of debt linger is anathema, and the sooner Peggy can quietly repay Angie for the acting performance of a lifetime when Peggy’s life and freedom were on the line, the better she’ll feel.

She waves across the street, not to hail a taxi but to summon Jarvis from where he’s no doubt lurking after her call that afternoon. The car rolls to a stop moments later, and Peggy lets herself into the passenger seat with no small amount of relief. They’re pulling out into Manhattan’s evening traffic when Howard pops up from the backseat.

“I heard you’re in need of some help with a couple of ladies,” he announced, smirking at Peggy in the rearview mirror. It meant she could roll her eyes at him without turning round, but that would have denied her the pleasure of smacking him across the jaw. To his credit, Howard took his hit with a minimum of complaining, focused instead on the possibility of seduction for a cause. 

“I don’t recall requesting your presence, Howard,” Peggy sends a decidedly dirty look in Jarvis’s direction. “Though I expect your long history of inviting yourself may be more to blame than anyone else.” Jarvis relaxes his visibly tense grip on the wheel. 

“Theater broads are easy,” Howard assures her. “I dated so many I qualify for my Equity card, I’m pretty sure. Who’s the mark?”

“Someone called Ethel Merman,” Peggy tells him, and it’s worth it for the jaw drop of terror on Howard’s face. “Although if you’re not up to the challenge, there’s always the understudy. Perfectly charming girl by the name of Mary Jane.”

“Why is it, Miss Carter, that you’re so intent on shuffling the deck at the Imperial?” Jarvis asks. “It’s not like you to take an interest in the arts.”

“I owe a dear friend a great favor,” Peggy admits. “One she would never ask for, and that’s what makes it even more important that I secure this opportunity for her.”

“Angie’s big break?” Howard surmises. Sometimes Peggy wishes he’d be a little less sharp at problem-solving. 

“I just need a few nights without the understudy. They keep telling me this Merman never misses a show, but I’ve got a funny feeling I can change that. Given the right circumstances.”

“No one’s gonna get hurt are they, Peggy?” Howard has the cheek, the utter gall, to look concerned for the welfare of women he doesn’t know.

“No more than usual. You’d better get yourself to the jeweler in the morning, Mr. Jarvis.”

***

Howard, in the end, proves his worth in ten minutes flat. Whether the actress falls for his charms or simply agrees to shut him up is not something Peggy would care to wager on, but Jarvis and the car are pulling away from the curb eleven minutes after Howard waltzed Peggy through the stage door with a cool hundred to silence any protests from the doorman. She watches the car go, its three occupants just shadows, from her prime spot in what is in the early stages of becoming Ethel Merman’s dressing room.

Peggy eyes the boxes of tea, still crated, with no small amount of envy. There are costumes on rails, baskets on the long dressing table filled with perfume bottles and endless tubes of cosmetics. Already flowers are piling up on a table opposite, spilling onto the couch beside it. Cards are stacked on the dressing table, too, with one or two already pinned around the mirror. In that moment, fierce devotion to Angie’s career aside, Peggy knows she can’t do it. To threaten the career, even for the most temporary of seconds, of such a successful woman would be an unforgivable sin. The love and respect, even in a half-packed temporary home, is palpable.

“I’ve seen you before,” says a strong voice from the doorway. Busted, Peggy realizes with a groan. “You were here the day the sky fell down. Trying to do the same to my dressing room?”

“Miss Merman,” Peggy summons up her very best RP, every vowel and consonant as crisp as freshly-toasted bread. “I’m so very sorry to intrude, but I’m just such a fan of your work.”

The eyebrow raise is far deadlier than her own, and Peggy holds up her hands in defeat. 

“What’s the real story, honey? Before I get the stagehands up here to toss you out on your pretty English ass?”

“I had rather thought I could engineer a situation where my friend might get one night - just one - to step out from the back of the chorus,” Peggy is so tired of lying, and this is a cockamamie scheme to begin with. Why not bet on the truth one pointless time? “I see now that I could do no such thing. I’ll be on my way.”

“What were you going with? Poison in the tea? Or something simple, like itching powder in my costumes?”

“I was hoping I would work it out when I got here,” Peggy admits. Something in this woman’s brash kindness makes her feel like a recalcitrant schoolgirl again, bending her head in contrition when she should be bolting for freedom. “As I say, you no longer have anything to worry about.”

“Except I just saw my understudy leave with Howard Stark. So God knows when we’ll get her back, and how long it’ll take her to remember the lines when we do. Taking Mary Jane out of the equation means you’re in it for the Martinelli kid, am I right?”

“Please, Miss Merman, she knows nothing about this. I wanted to return a rather grand favor she did me a little while ago, and it’s selfish really because I’m no fan of the musical. I thought it might be more bearable with someone I care for in every number.”

“Well I’m not in every number, kid. Only an idiot would sign a contract for that.”

“If you could find your way to not telling Angie-”

“On one condition.”

“What’s that?” Peggy sees her chance to escape unscathed, and is desperate to grab it.

“You tell her the real story.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Beg all you want. Instead of telling her what a lovesick idiot you are for coming up with this nonsense, why don’t you tell her what lengths you’re willing to go to? And how that makes you a little bit more than simple gal pals, wouldn’t you say? I mean, I’m assuming she won’t mind. Half the chorus is sweet on her already.”

“You … I mean … well, that’s hardly …”

“I hear everything. When I’m in the theater, it’s my theater, and it all flows back to me. Now, scram while I’m feeling benevolent. I got to go see my kids before I’m missing every bedtime for God knows how long.”

“Right. Well. Thank you?” Peggy scrambles for the door, darting across the back darkened stage with its covered scenery, back towards the stage door with a merciful lack of police officers to arrest her. Before she can decide whether to return home and brave two Martinellis, there’s a tap on her shoulder.

“It’s my show, that’s what people pay for and that’s what they’re gonna get.” Merman is actually not much smaller than Peggy herself, but on the sidewalk she maintains all the charisma she holds within the theater’s walls. It makes Peggy rather shrink back into herself. “You’ll hear people say I never miss, and it’s true. But this pal of yours, is she a real talent?”

“I assure you, she is.”

“I have a few pals who run cabarets, that sort of thing. Does it help you out if I take her aside and suggest she go sing at one of the nights?”

“That would be wonderful. More than I dared hope for, in all honesty.”

“There’s no harm in asking nice, Miss…?”

“Carter,” Peggy tells her. “Peggy Carter. If you can do that for Angie, she’ll do you proud. I have every faith.”

“You’ll have to be there, cheering her on. If the chorus girls don’t get to her first, anyway.”

“I promise I will be,” Peggy says, cheeks flaming as she tries to stop her brain firing the disparate pieces of the puzzle together, building a romance from a hundred glances and cherished moments. Taking words said in innocence and imbuing them with meanings Peggy herself had never realized. It’s taken the grand dame of Broadway to find the hidden intel that the spy herself had overlooked. “Goodnight, Miss Merman. And break a leg, you know. For the opening.”

“Run along,” Merman tells her, but the smile isn’t unkind. A moment later a car is pulling up, and the driver leaps out to open the door for his passenger. Peggy darts towards the alley, and loses herself in the bustle of a New York evening that’s threatening rain.

***

Flowers are the only armor she can think of, and it’s peonies that Peggy clutches as she knocks on her own front door. Angie opens it, bemused at the sight of a slightly soggy Peggy and her hastily-purchased blooms. 

“Ma’s gone, if that’s why you’re knocking. I got a good lecture about the immorality of the theater before she went though, so you sure missed yourself.”

“Angie,” Peggy blurts as she steps into the foyer. “I’m afraid I’ve been rather stupid.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Angie cracks. “What did you borrow and break? That’s what the flowers are for, right? An apology?”

“I’ve been trying to get you promoted,” Peggy admits. “Your colleague, Mary Jane, has wandered off somewhere with Howard Stark. I was in the process of finding a way to sabotage Ethel Merman, to get you your chance to be onstage, when I realized how truly round the bend I’d gone.”

“English!” Angie shrieks. “Howard? Merman? What the… Peggy? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I hate musicals,” Peggy groans. “Loathe them. The opera I can take, at a push, but that’s simply because the translating keeps me occupied. I thought if I have to sit through a three-hour musical-”

“Two and a half,” Angie interrupts. “We got tighter in Philly.”

“Right. I thought it would be better for me, but more importantly I’d be doing you a service, much like the one you did for me when I was freezing on the windowsill.”

“Well, at least you changed your mind. And Mary Jane is made of strong stuff. Howard Stark won’t have any effect on her, you just wait.”

“The thing is, before I did... Or immediately after I did… Let’s just say I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the head of your company of actors, and she is quite some woman.”

“You met La Merm?” Angie squeals. “Oh God, did she bust you trying to put sugar in the gas tank or something?”

“Not exactly. We did have a frank conversation though, and she made a condition for forgetting my ill-advised mission. You see, she pointed out that it’s quite ludicrous for one friend to go to such lengths for another friend. In fact, she rather suggested that I, along with apparently half of the chorus, might have a bad case of the hots for Angie Martinelli. And if I didn’t admit as much, even though I just realized myself, well… Let’s just say this confession means you can go to work as normal. No reprisals, and I am terribly sorry to have ruined your evening with it. Just ignore me, Angie.”

“Ignore you?” Angie repeats. “You’re trying to make out like this is some obligation to Merman, but you brought me flowers, English.”

“I did.”

“Which means at least part of you is sincere. A part of you is hoping I want you to be all the things my Ma just warned me about, and a few more that I hope to St. Theresa she ain’t never heard of, besides.”

“She warned you…”

“All this time I’ve been carrying a torch for you, and I thought be quiet, Angie! When you looked so interested at dinner the other night, I had this half a second of hope, not more than a glimmer but… Peggy Carter, are you saying you’re sweet on me?”

“Sweet enough to try and take out a Tony-winner,” Peggy admits, thrusting the flowers towards Angie as a final gesture. “So I would completely understand if you want to run in the opposite direction.”

“Oh, English,” Angie sighs, and for a moment she looks so deflated, so thoroughly disappointed, that Peggy is sure she’s blown any sliver of a chance she might once have had. But Angie, sweet descendant of Thespis that she is, has simply been milking the moment for ultimate dramatic effect. “Why in hell would I want to run anywhere but right into your arms?”

“Well, there’s not much space for a run up,” Peggy teases, letting Angie put her hands on her hips and draw Peggy closer. “But I’m game if you are.”

Angie kisses her, a tentative peck and not much more on the lips. “I am so game, Peggy. You have no idea.” The kiss that follows is far more direct, a collision of lips that becomes something much more fun very quickly. Peggy kisses back until her lips tingle, letting fingers roam through Angie’s loose curls while the other arm wraps around her waist. It’s a perfectly theatrical romantic clinch, and Peggy already knows she’ll want encore after encore. 

“So,” Angie purrs as they part. “That was quite a warm up, English. You think you’re ready for the first act?”

“Lead on,” Peggy commands, and Angie takes her by the hand to do exactly that.

**Author's Note:**

> Ethel Merman was a legend, and her attendance record barring vacation and actual hospitalisation was a thing of wonder that few theatre stars could ever hope to emulate.
> 
> Annie, Get Your Gun opened on Broadway at the Imperial Theater on May 16, 1946. The out of town stops, the girder falling on stage, all of that is accurate and based on real life. Mary Jane Walsh was indeed Merman's understudy. If you want to know the caliber of actress she was, while covering for Merman late in 1947, she was traveling to the theater with her fiancé and he was killed when another vehicle hit their taxi. Determined not to disappoint the audience, with Merman already out, Miss Walsh went out and performed the whole show, only collapsing into her grief afterwards. 
> 
> All of which is to say: theater people are hardcore. I found out about this tragedy while doing background for this fic, and it's why I opted to have Peggy not wreak too much havoc in the end.


End file.
